With City favourites to claim the Premier League title, the city's football fans are adapting to a world turned upside down
Hyde Road winds through the driving rain of May in Manchester to reach the gym owned and run by Ricky Hatton, the city's favourite son in the boxing ring – who came from the rough Hattersley housing estate and out of nowhere in 2005 to become world welterweight champion for more than four years. Now, on the gym's upper floor, Hatton is training boxers for his biggest night yet as a promoter, featuring four title fights.
On the walls behind the ropes of the practice ring are posters from Hatton's days as a champion, one advertising a bout with José Luis Castillo in Las Vegas, which Manchester United stars David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand flew to watch. There's a photograph of Rooney with Hatton after the fight. But here's the rub: Hatton's signature tune every time he entered the ring was Blue Moon, Manchester City's song. And before his big night as a promoter at Manchester's Velodrome on 16 June, Hatton has another major engagement – right over the road as a spectator at Eastlands stadium, where his beloved City are one home game against QPR short of winning their first Premier League title, and their first league championship since 1968.
If they fail – and Rooney, Ferdinand et al gather more points at Sunderland – United will continue business as usual and take their 20th league title. But if City succeed against QPR, who have their own survival interests at stake, the resurgence, rise and riches of sky blue Manchester will have not only transformed the Premier League, but blown a hurricane of change through the city in which the football league was founded in 1888.
Manchester United's fans need no more introduction than Sir Alex Ferguson's team: there are some 33 million of them registered into clubs across the planet (I watched United win the 2008 European Cup at a packed two-storey supporters' club in Beijing) – fans of a team that tops Forbes magazine's chart of "valuable sports team brands" with a worth of £1.4bn.
Fans of the City team Ferguson recently called "noisy neighbours" have an articulate view on all this, with their chant: "Do you come from Manchester?", and a banner posted across Deansgate when Carlos Tevez exchanged red for blue: "Welcome to Manchester". Tensions between loosely Catholic Irish United and loyalist City have dissipated over time and given way to jokes by City supporters about disgruntled United fans throwing their season tickets into the river Thames.
But if any of that were ever true, it is about to change now that a river of money – initially from former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and then a deluge from the rulers of Abu Dhabi – has turned what Hatton calls "a family club" into likely champions. "All my life, it's been United, United, in your face; every time you go to a pub or switch on the radio, you've had to duck it," says Hatton. "We've been waiting 44 years for this. It's incredible. Get this one under our belt, and we're here to stay.
"Until now in Manchester, it's been a matter of pride between your mates, never a real rivalry on the pitch that I can remember," he continues. "I've been a season ticket holder at the Kippax End since I was 11, and you've had to have a sense of humour, the crap we've put up with over the years, doing silly dances like the one we call the 'Poznan' what we learned from Poland. But we've stayed a people's club, getting crowds of 30,000 even when we were in the third division [City were in the third tier for a season, in 1998], and we've been through thick and thin."
Will you miss any of that – the real-life laughter of humbler football? "Nah. We've had it for too long," retorts Hatton. "We've had enough of that now – United've won it 19 times, now give us a break. But we're a family club, we want to bring the kids, and I don't want to lose that."
For three decades, United fans have chosen to punch at their own weight, contemptuous of City, pursuing the rivalry once defined by Ferguson's stated aim to "knock Liverpool off their fucking perch". The big derby game has been along the East Lancs Road, against the Merseyside club once captained by the patriarch of modern Manchester United, Matt Busby (who moved to Liverpool from Manchester City), even to the point of appalling songs exchanged about the Hillsborough and Munich air crash disasters, and teargas thrown at the United team one afternoon at Anfield.
"All I've ever known is: hate Liverpool," says Calvin Bennett, eating dinner at the Champion Theatre of Food PremierChip fish bar before last Thursday's Reserves League playoff final at Old Trafford, which teenage fanatics like Calvin and his mates get to see only when they pay a pound for a seat to watch the reserves from the North Stand. One of the burgeoning class of unemployed local United fans, Calvin from Swinton cannot afford to follow the first team except on TV, and "never really thought much about City, like they're just bitter and jealous".
"And it's crap," he insists, "that there's no United [fans] in Manchester. Where I was at school, there was only two City fans in my class, and the rest was United." Is that because, I ask, of the legacy, the history? "Yeah. The cups, the tradition, ain't it, the league titles and dominating football. City think they can buy the Premiership, don't they? But they can't buy tradition."
The reserves play a decent but goal-less second half, and win the trophy 3-1 on penalties. "I'm 19," says Calvin as we leave the only open cash turnstile, gate N48, to catch the metro, "but I know all about Georgie Best and Matt Busby's team, and about Eric Cantona. You can't buy that with Arab fucking money, can ya?" But while the tram stops for ever at red lights between stations, there ensues a conversation about "fucking Americans" too, and the fact that, as Calvin's friend Elliot said, £500m of United's profits has been spent on servicing the debts of the Florida-based Glazer family, incurred when the Glazers borrowed heavily to buy the club in 2005.
At the White Lion pub off Deansgate, a noisy Mancunian hen night takes place under a picture of United winning that 19th title, inscribed for the publican: "To Rose and all at the White Lion. We wouldn't have done it without you. Alex Ferguson." Next to it, a picture of Rooney's famous scissor-kick goal against City, and the caption: "I dedicate my best ever goal to Rose, a real Utd legend."
"They bought the title," says Rose, presuming the worst, "though miracles can happen. It shows what money can buy: what we did over years, they think they can grab with just cash. We're all gutted." But she adds: "I do feel a bit of pride when I see Manchester up there, and all those points before the London clubs, and I've loads of blue friends. I just know which colour I wish was on the top!"
Dave Wallace, who grew up among United fans, is finishing lunch at the sports centre cafeteria in the shadow of Eastlands stadium, and plans to watch a play about Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street) just "to take my mind off things for a moment, I'm so nervous. I woke up this morning from a nightmare that Nedum Onuoha had scored the winning goal for QPR." He laughs, but only just. Onuoha was transferred from City, "and there's Mark Hughes [the former City and now QPR manager] coming back, and Joey Barton. It should be easy, but they're a crazy team – I'm almost feeling that it was better for my health before all this."
Wallace edits and sells the King of the Kippax fanzine, which he founded 24 years ago. "To be honest," he admits, "we were astounded that the Arabs came in, investing all that money in the biggest challenge in football – against United. After all those years of City shooting ourselves in the foot while United got in executive boxes in the 1960s so people could watch football through glass, for fuck's sake."
But haven't City done just the same, but at a faster pace? "We were in a different situation," insists Wallace. "United were strong when the Glazers arrived. We were 14th in the table when the Thais came. I know it was a bit dodgy, like, with this politician wiping out the drug dealers, but some of us joked that, 'Hey – some of them were probably United fans!' Look, we'd all like our clubs to be owned by fans, or run like the German clubs, but that's not how it is if you want to be successful in this league, and the transformation on the pitch has been amazing."
This season's two Manchester derbies produced an aggregate score of 7-1 – and all six points – to City, "and I had my grandson there," says Wallace, "and you don't want them at a game when they're turning round and asking: 'Why am I watching this?' I couldn't have been more proud."
There is a football sage in Manchester, Adam Brown: a former United fan but now board member of FC United of Manchester, the non-league club that emerged from dissent against the commercialisation of the game in general and at the Glazer takeover of United in particular.
Brown, who has not watched United since 2005, now runs an independent social research co-operative called Substance, but in 2002, for Manchester Metropolitan University, compiled the only statistical data on each team's geographical base, finding that in 2001, United fans came mostly from the north and west of the city, and from Salford, City's from the east and south.
More season tickets at Old Trafford were sold to fans with Manchester postcodes than at Maine Road, but a higher proportion of those at City were locals. Gone were the days, says Brown, when fans used to watch both teams on alternate Saturdays. But "there are dichotomies within both clubs. United fans love the glory, but even in the late 90s a backlash against BSkyB's attempt to buy United led to a reassertion of local club identity.
Meanwhile, City want to be the 'people's club' but their aspirations are to be one of the big teams. Now, the millions from Thailand and Abu Dhabi have to change how people feel about the identity of the club. I find it interesting and difficult to explain, however, that while United fans' questioning of [Rupert] Murdoch and the Glazers can be in part attributed to the city's radical history, there's been no questioning of the sheikh's fortune from City's fans."
One of those Red Mancunians is Luke Bainbridge, former editor of Manchester's City Life and freelance writer for this parish. "I can see why City fans are branded as a bit bitter," Bainbridge says. "Don't forget it's not always been glory, glory for United. I was 19 before we won the league. I can also see why some people think United fans are arrogant. But like the banner at Old Trafford says, we're not arrogant, just better."
But as a Mancunian, he qualifies his partisanship at least this far: "I do think Manchester as a city needs two teams competing at this level. Manchester is not Newcastle or Stoke: this is not a one-team town. This is the city where the football league was born. You can buy the league – Blackburn Rovers did in 1995 and look at the sorry state they're in now – but you can't buy legacy. City will never have the history that United has, but they shouldn't beat themselves up too much about it … neither have Liverpool or Real Madrid."
City
Origins
East Manchester footballing institution that last tasted glory in the late 1960s before falling on hard times.
Their fans used to say …
"We're a happy-go-lucky collection of romantic eccentrics who are too busy having a good time to care about trophies."
… but now they say:
"If we win the league, the oil money from Abu Dhabi means we will 'own' the next decade in English football."
What will their fans sing today?
"We're not really here," to the tune of We Shall Not Be Moved. Thought up when City passed an unlikely season in the third tier of English football.
Least appealing trait
After 30 years in the shadow of their neighbours, the bitterness can often be overwhelming.
United
Origins
Set up by 19th-century railwaymen in the north of Manchester. The club's recovery after the Munich air crash in 1958, in which eight players died, made it the best supported in the land.
Their fans used to say...
"Let's all laugh at City," as a total of 19 league titles were amassed.
… but now they say:
"This isn't funny any more", as City threaten to win their first championship for 44 years.
What will their fans sing today?
To the tune of This Old Man: "U-N-I-T-E-D, United are the team for me, with a knick-knack paddy-whack give a dog a bone, why don't City fuck off home?"
Least appealing trait
Two decades of crass commercialism has undermined the club's romance. Read More
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
